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First of all, apologies to my readers for being unable to contribute to Forbes.com for some time due to personal reasons. The Chinese Outbound Tourism continues to develop fast and there is much to write about, so I hope to do some catching up in the coming weeks.

Perhaps a fitting piece of news to restart this blog is the fact that mainland Chinese citizens for the first time ever have crossed the border more than a 100 million times in a twelve month period. According to the calculations of COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute (of which I am proud to be the director), government statistics show that between April 2013 and March 2014 about 102 million border crossings took place. And for the whole of 2013, the respective number had been 97 million, a year-on-year growth rate of more than 15%, in spite of the continuing deceleration of the wider Chinese economy.

Chinese travelers are being welcomed in locations all across the world, resulting in an increasing number of countries easing their regulations, including the Schengen countries in Europe and even the U.K., or even installing visa-waiver policies in places like the holiday islands of Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, Jamaica and others. The changes appear to make a lot of sense as anecdotal evidence points to a very low rate of Chinese overstaying their visas in most destinations, whereas the less desirable visitors have probably already availed themselves of the "Golden Visa" policies that offer permanent residency status or even citizenship and a passport in exchange for investment in many countries around the world.

Given the fact that more Chinese travelers are roaming the planet on self-organized tours, freed from being the hostages of tour guides and the limitations of mainstream Chinese tour operators, smaller destinations are now trying to secure for themselves a piece of the cake. On the Italian island of Sicily, the mayor of Agrigento recently took the trouble to appear on a video asking the Chinese tourists, "Please invade us!"

That he even tried to convey his message in Mandarin was certainly a good idea, a little map showing where the World Heritage Site city is actually located might have been helpful to provide some guidance to the hoped-for invaders.

Portugal is another example of an European country which is not benefiting from a central location or direct air links with China, but nevertheless is now starting to increase its ability to attract Chinese visitors through customized "Chinese Tourist Welcome" training for the tourism industry, and increased efforts to understand how to adapt its services to the needs of this new customer group.

Chinese travelers are welcomed almost all over the world - almost? Yes, because, especially in some destinations closer to China, a plea for invasion is not necessary at all, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and Chiang Mai in Thailand being two examples. A few weeks ago the former British colony's chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, was quoted as saying that a 20% cut in mainland visitors was an option being considered by his government. He reacted on a number of public outcries against the overcrowding effect from an influx of 40 million mainland Chinese visitors last year, some of whom are accused of "boorish" behavior, such as allowing their children to relieve themselves in public. Similar complaints by the inhabitants of Chiang Mai about the stream of "uncivilized" Chinese visitors in search of the locations of the successful film comedy "Lost in Thailand" on the other hand have been probably taken care of by the substantive drop of the number of Chinese arrivals in Thailand since the beginning of the year and especially since the declaration of Martial Law.

The most unlikely destination looking to replace Chinese with Western visitors, however, is North Korea. Some commentators have reported that the habit of mainland tourists of throwing candy to North Korean children "as if feeding ducks" and similar overlording behavior does not go down well with the Korean hosts. Probably more important might be the fact that according to South Korean media the Chinese government has limited the number of Chinese travel groups allowed to cross the border rivers Yalu and Tumen as a punishment for too independent behavior of the North Korean government.